Rodrigo D.: No Future (NR)

‘Rodrigo D.: No Future’ (NR)

"Rodrigo D.: No Future," the first feature by Victor Manuel Gaviria, is the movie equivalent of garage rock -- it's crude, angry, stripped down to basics.

Set in 1988, in the poverty-ravaged mountain town of Medellin, Colombia, the film follows the wanderings of a group of young street punks who get wasted, commit petty heists, deal drugs to schoolkids, and kill cops and each other, all with the same expression of amoral blankness. They're like the ruthless barrio rats in Luis Bunuel's "Los Olvidados," which might have served as Gaviria's model; since there's no hope for relief, nothing fazes them. They don't want to grow old and, as one character puts it, "live the life of a slave." If they died tomorrow, they wouldn't give a damn.

Rodrigo (Ramiro Meneses), the film's protagonist, doesn't really belong to the gang; he's too much of a loner even for that. A frustrated drummer, he wanders through the rubble of the city looking for a set of skins so he can start a punk band. Music, mostly punk and heavy metal, is about the only thing these toughs care about; its raw, undisciplined aggression seems to hook up with their own shrieking malaise.

Music gives the movie its spine too. Gaviria borrows energy from the songs he's packed onto the soundtrack, but he brings a brutal vitality of his own to the images as well. The picture has vitality, but it's an aimless sort. The narrative fragments never hook up, and his storytelling style is too scrambled for his characters to earn our empathy. His primitivism has its virtues, though. The desperate cynicism of his people gets through to us undiluted, without the watering-down of artistry. He simply picks up his story and slaps you upside the head with it.

Copyright The Washington Post

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